“Oh Lord I want your power. Please give it to me.”

Then you might say to me,

“Please can you pray for me so that I can get it.”

You are looking for it everywhere but it hasn’t come yet. Why? You are thinking,

“Maybe God doesn’t want to give it to me. Maybe it is not His will. Perhaps I still have too much sin in my life.”

For Those Who Believe

Repent and change your thinking. The Lord did not say it is for those who are sinless. The gift is for those who believe.

So how do you get the power? You get it by believing God’s Word. It comes by faith. Have you been trying to get it and it hasn’t come? Perhaps you have been wondering if it is for you and you have been thinking,

“I wonder what is wrong in my life that God doesn’t want to give it to me.”

I used to be like that. I grew up in the Pentecostal church. I saw speaking in tongues from when I was a baby, but I couldn’t speak in tongues. I was 20 years old already and still couldn’t speak in tongues.

All the children from 5 years up were all speaking in tongues, but I still couldn’t do it. They called everybody forward for prayer. I would stand there with all the children and they all spoke in tongues. I went to sit down again and I was still not speaking in tongues.

I got to the place where I was starting to feel a bit embarrassed. Here I was, the Youth Leader in the church. I was a deacon and holding all sorts of positions in the church and I couldn’t speak in tongues.

How I Finally Received the Power

I reached a point in my life where I said,

“Lord, I have to do something about this.”

I tried fasting but that didn’t work. I began to repent of my sin. I thought of everything that was wrong and I thought,

“Maybe it is my mouth. I’ve been speaking bad things, so God won’t give me tongues because my tongue is dirty.”

So I cleaned my tongue but nothing happened.

I can remember one day in my life. It was a Sunday afternoon. My wife was resting for the afternoon and I got up and went to the living room by myself. I said,

“Lord, today I am getting this thing.”

There was one more thing I wanted to try. It was a method I heard people tell me you could use. They said,

“What you must do is listen to someone who speaks in tongues and learn a few of the words. Then you copy them. You start speaking those words and then the Holy Ghost will give you the rest.”

It sounded pretty good, so I got my words and I spoke them out. I repeated them over and over again and went faster and faster but still nothing happened.

I was desperate. I said,

“Lord, what is wrong with me?”

Then I picked up my Bible. I opened it up and a Scripture hit me in the face. It was from Galatians 3:2 and the verse said this.

Galatians 3:2 This only would I learn of you, Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

It stopped me right there. I closed my Bible and opened it again. I found another one. It said,

Galatians 3:5 He therefore that supplies to you the Spirit, and works miracles among you, [does he do it] by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

I stopped and said,

“I get it. I will never be ready. I will never be good enough. It doesn’t come by my righteousness. It comes by faith.”

So what is faith? I don’t know if I really understood what faith was, but I knew that it meant that I had to reach out and take it from God. So I stopped and said,

“Okay Lord.”

Then I reached out my hand towards heaven and said,

“I am taking it now. Lord I receive your promise by faith. I take it now. I accept it and I receive it for myself. Thank you Lord for your Spirit. I have it. It is mine. I feel nothing, but that doesn’t matter. It is a faith thing and I got it by faith. It’s mine. I have it!”

Okay now I have it, but what am I going to do with it? Speak in tongues of course. You see tongues is not the power. Tongues is not the Spirit. It just comes with it.

If you are filled with the Spirit then you can speak in tongues. You don’t wait until you have spoken in tongues before you are filled with the Spirit. We have it back to front.

You see you don’t receive tongues by faith. You receive the Spirit by faith. And now that you have received the Spirit, now you can speak in tongues.

Trying Tongues

So there I was. I had received the Spirit and now I wanted to speak in tongues. I thought,

“Okay, here we go Lord.”

This time I didn’t speak the phrase I had been speaking earlier on. Now I opened my mouth and began to speak what was not English and was not my natural language. It sounded like nonsense to me and I wondered,

“Is that tongues?”

It didn’t sound like tongues and I couldn’t feel a thing. I thought,

“Am I supposed to feel something?”

I had doubts, so I spoke some more. This time there were a few extra words coming out that I hadn’t spoken before. Was that tongues? It didn’t feel like it.

You see it comes by faith. I had received the Holy Spirit by faith. Now I just had to learn to speak in tongues. Sometimes children taken a while to learn to speak. They start out by saying,

“Dada, dada.”

You might start out speaking in tongues in the same way; by saying,

“Dadada.”

What is happening is the Holy Spirit is beginning to control your tongue. It doesn’t always come clear the first time. The important thing is that you don’t speak in your normal language. You must give your tongue to the Holy Spirit now and He will make it move.

It is like pushing the boat out on the water and you let the Holy Spirit steer the rudder.

You Must Speak

Here is the mistake that many people make. They are waiting for the Holy Ghost to make them speak in tongues. You are saying,

“Okay, I received the Holy Spirit. Lord I am ready to speak in tongues now.”

Then you just sit and do nothing, and after a while you say,

“It is not happening. Why isn’t He making me speak in tongues?”

Because He doesn’t do that. The Holy Spirit doesn’t speak in tongues. You are the one who speaks in tongues. He just gives you the words to speak. If you don’t open your mouth and say something, you will never ever speak in tongues.

You might say to me,

“If I can get the words in my mind, then I will speak those words out.”

You don’t even speak your normal language that way. You don’t think all the words in your mind before you open your mouth and speak. If you are a talkative person like me, you just open your mouth and it pours out.

It is the same with speaking in tongues. Open your mouth and speak.

You might say, “But what happens if I speak the wrong words.”

It doesn’t matter. You can speak rubbish for the first 5 words if you want to.

I can speak in tongues at any time, in any place, just by opening my mouth. The first words that I speak can be words that I make up. It doesn’t matter. You see, you open your mouth and speak by faith. You don’t know what you are saying.

You might say, “But don’t I have to get in the anointing. The Holy Ghost has to take hold of me and take hold of my tongue. Then my tongue starts to move quickly on its own.”

That didn’t happen with me, and that is why you haven’t spoken in tongues yet.

Some people who are reading this have already received the Holy Spirit. But you think you haven’t because you haven’t spoken in tongues. It comes by faith. It’s not something that happens to you. It’s something you take and use. It’s a gift of God.

You know I have children that I give gifts to, and I have never had to force a gift on my child. I just need to walk into the house with it all wrapped up and they want to start snatching it already.

But it seems as though you are waiting for God to hit you with this gift. Don’t you want it?

I can imagine my son. I am bringing this gift for him, and he gets down on his knees and says,

“Please dad can I have it?”

I say, “There it is.”

“Please can I have it?”

What does he want me to do, take it and hit it over his head? No he takes it out of my hands so fast and rips the paper off. He wants to get what is inside.

That is what you should be doing. The gift has been given to you and it is available to you today. Just reach out, take it by faith and receive it. It is yours.

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